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BULLETIN OF THE WISCONSIN STATE 
BOARD OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

NO. 3 

Industrial Education 



THE IMPENDING STEP IN AMERICAN 
EDUCATIONAL POLICY 



Its Significance for the Boy, the Parent, the 
Community, the State, the Nation 



BY 



H. E. MILES, President 

of the 

Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education 



MADISON 

Published by the Board 

1912 



Honogr*^ 



BULLETIN OF THE WISCONSIN STATE 
BOARD OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

NO. 3 

Industrial Education 



THE IMPENDING STEP IN AMERICAN 
EDUCATIONAL POLICY 



Its Significance for the Boy, the Parent, the 
Community, the State, the Nation 



BY 



H. E. MILES, President 

of the 

Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education 



MADISON 

Published by the Board 

1912 



Monograph 



\ 



Wisconsin State Board of Industrial 
Education 



H. E. Miles, President 
Racine 

Louis E. Reber, Secretary 
Madison 

C. P. Cary, Madison 

Donna Dines, Milwaukee 

A. S. LiNDEMANx. Milwaukee 

Mert Malone, Oshkosh 

William M. Miller, Eau Claire 

F. E. Turneaure, Madison 

E. E. Winch, Marshfield 

D. OF D. 
APR, 25 1913 



-2. 



^ 



Industrial Education 



The Impending Step in American Educational Policy ; Its Significance 
for the Boy, the Parent, the Community, the State, the Nation 



H. E. Miles, Racine, Wisconsin 
President Wisconsin /State Board Industrial Education 

A school teacher once said to Judge Lindsey of the Juvenile 
Court in Denver, Judge, why don't you send this boy to the re- 
form school so he can learn a trade?" This school teacher had no 
sense whatever of the obligation that rests upon every community 
to provide practical industrial training to those of its children who 
need it. Judge Lindsey replied, "Why don't you school people 
make such provision that a boy can get industrial education with- 
out going to a reform school?" That school teacher fairly ex- 
pressed the public opinion of ten years ago. 

Contrast with his attitude that of a Wisconsin Superintendent, 
Mr. Nelson of Racine, who recently sent this word to a boy of 
fifteen, who had been two years out <>f- School, the first year as a 
truant, and influencing other boys to truancy. Come to see me 
or I'll send for you." The boy came. Said Mr. Nelson, "How 
long have you worked in these two years, and how much have you 
earned?" Said the boy, "I've worked one or two days and earned 
a dollar and a half." Said Mr. Nelson, Being past fourteen, 
the truancy officers can't reach you, but there is a vagrancy law 
that makes subject to arrest those who persistently loiter and re- 
fuse to work. You must attend the industrial school the five hours 
per week prescribed for those in employment, or you will be ar- 
rested for vagrancy." The boy demurred, then consented. The 
boy and his parents chose a trade for him, Mr. Nelson approving, 
and after a few days in the school the boy added hour upon hour 



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Voluntarily to hi.s work, and distinguished himself by earnest, en- 
thusiastic, capable performance. He had found himself. Hun- 
dreds of boys have done the same. 

Educating the Citizen of Tomorrow 

By industrial education it now devolves upon us in very impor- 
tant respects to shape the lives of the children of today, and 
thereby to make the men and women of tomorrow — the Americans of 
tomorrow. Each year 2 §000,00*5 children graduate from our ele- 
mentary schools, proud and confident in having accomplished the 
first great task of their lives in successfully finishing the eight 
years' course with credit. An equal number of children, a vast 
army of tar a ani^ tt half niHWuif little ones, most of them only 14 
years of age, leave these same schools discredited, unsuccessful, 
aimless, most of them having gotten no farther than the sixth 
grade, having learned little else than the three R's, not educated in 
any sense, but only possessed of the rudiments whereby real educa- 
tion may be acquired. They have been, in a way, schooled only 
in how to fail. These are the children who go into the industries, 
and deserve and require industrial or trade education. 

The System Once Good Now Outgrown and Misdirected 

The American system of common school education in its earlier 
years was the wonder and admiration of the world. President 
Eliot rightly described it as one of America's five great contribu- 
tions to civilization. 

It brought general knowledge to the masses with the ability to 
read, write, and compute. It found the industries adequately 
supplied with artisans of great skill. The artisans of those days 
took small part in public affairs. Their pleasure and their pros- 
pect of advancement lay in their skill. Apparently it was taken 
for granted that skill would be continued without being made a 
part of the system of general education. This left that system 
to extend, only the cultural side of life without respect to the 
workaday side of efficiency and material accomplishment. 

Today it is evident that instead of having the best system of com- 
mon school education, we have one of the poorest. The minds of our 
youth have been so wholly turned to the cultural side that they have 
come to think that vocational training, and indeed the vocations 
themselves, is negligible if not undesirable. Our system has de- 
veloped a great taste for politics, for the study of social problems, 



and we might add, for the yellow penny paper, and an equal dis- 
taste for the earnest all-compelling conquest of a trade or occupa- 
tion, and worse yet, a distaste for hard work. Love of work used 
to be, and with some still is, a consuming passion. All worthy 
work is divine. To the old time artisan, work brought divine joy. 
He. complied with the precept of Solomon, "Wherefore I perceive 
there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work 
for that is his portion." What profiteth a child if he can read 
the penny paper but cannot use mind and body happily and 
efficiently for his own maintenance and for the good of his asso- 
ciates and the state? Is a child really educated until he can so 
apply himself? The more thoughtful nations of Europe say no. 
We, of the United States, have been so asleep in this matter that 
we are not prepared to answer. 

Our whole educational system rests upon the accepted doctrine 
that it is the duty of the state to educate every child that he may 
become an intelligent, useful member of society. It rests upon 
the expectation that substantially all the children go through the 
elementary schools, and a very great proportion of them through 
the high school. 

How utterly untrue our system is to this principle is evidenced 
by the fact that less than half our children go beyond the sixth 
grade. Only one in three completes the grammar school course, 
only one in five enters the high school, and only one in thirty 
graduates from the high school. Our system then does not edu- 
cate generally nor thoroughly. Taken as a whole it is comparable 
to a trans-oceanic liner, half of whose passengers drop out mid- 
way and only one-thirtieth of whom reach the port of destination. 

Work and Vocational Preparation 

Most of these children who quit school in the midst of their 
studies go to work; some upon the compulsion of earning a living. 
Indeed, all of them should turn to some occupation for their own 
sakes as against the temptations of idleness and dissipation. The 
great majority of them either enter the cursory occupations or per- 
form such simple tasks as are detrimental to mind and character. 
The Wisconsin Bureau of Labor in its report for 1910 declares 
that only twelve per cent of the children employed under sixteen 
years of age are in positions where they can learn a trade. 

One-half of all our children are therefore abandoned by the 



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state, educationally, at the tender age of fourteen, and substantially 
all of the children are neglected so far as trade education goes. 

We are told that the Master left ninety and nine to find one; 
the American school must, in this sense, leave in his security the 
thirtieth child who will graduate from the high school and go 
out after and save the twenty-nine who drop out meantime, and the 
fifty per cent who drop out at the end of the sixth grade. If we had 
to depend upon theory only, our course would be uncertain, but 
fortunately, the experience of all other great industrial nations, 
England alone excepted, clearly points the way. Let us consider 
Germany, for instance, though it is a question whether she is any 
further advanced in this respect than Austria, Belgium, or France. 
Germany apparently prefers that the great body of her children 
shall enter the industries at the age of fourteen. The point is 
that the state goes into the industry with the child; the hand of 
the child is kept within the hand of the state; the child is led and 
directed continuously from the time of his entrance into the indus- 
try until he is seventeen or eighteen years old. Instructors watch the 
child in the factory and, upon compulsion of the law, every child 
goes back into the school from the shop for a period of from seven 
to ten hours a week. 

The Continuation School 

The school to which he goes is called the Continuation School, 
for in this school his education is "continued. ,5 The shop practice 
of every trade is secured in the factory. The factory and all other 
work places are made niarvelously efficient factors in the system of 
education. The Continuation Schools, unlike our trade schools with 
their enormous investments in machinery, are for the most part 
devoid of machinery or apparatus beyond that common to a school 
desk or counting room. In the Continuation School only the 
science and art of the trade is taught. The child there learns the 
relations of his particular factory task to the whole of his indus- 
try. He is taught scientifically the higher reaches of his industry, 
and, up to the limit of his ability, is made an accomplished and 
scientific factor in his industry. The work places in turn are 
greatly influenced by this system. The children carry into their 
work the teachings of the schoo'. As in Cincinnati, where this 
system has been applied, the foremen are concerned in finding their 
boys possessed of practical and scientific ideas and short cuts not 



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known to the foremen themselves. This has resulted in continua- 
tion classes of the foremen and the betterment of the whole shop 
practice. 

Continuation vs. Trade Schools 

The almost inconsiderable investment in these Continuation 
"Schools, their dependence upon the factories for practice and 
equipment, enables the European Industrial School to teach all 
•the industries of each community. Consequently every child 
-who wishes, becomes a skilled employee in the local industry of his 
preference, and per contra, every home industry finds skilled, eager 
workers in the children of its community. Our trade schools, 
most expensively equipped, many of them costing a quarter of a 
million dollars or more, expend for maintenance alone from -$180 
to 8250 per year per student. American-like, we have found it 
easier to spend great sums this way than to go to the bottom of the 
question and accomplish five times more at a nominal expense. 
The Continental Continuation School represents in many cases al- 
most no investment except for buildings, and for the most part, 
the day school buildings are used. There should, however, in all 
schools, be installed sufficient machinery to illustrate the basic 
■operations of a trade, and for the use of children who are not in 
employment. The cost of maintenance per scholar per year is about 
$15, or one-tenth the cost in our trade schools, and one-half the 
cost in our present common schools. The scholar should spend at 
least one-half day per week in the Continuation School and this 
might properly be on Saturday when the buildings are not in use. 
Attendance should be compulsory, not in the sense of the police- 
man's club and the jail, but in the sense of recognition by statute 
•of high social obligations and ot the increase of the happiness, effi- 
ciency, and prosperity of the citizens and the state. 

Efficiency and the Love of One's Work 

Love of work comes of efficiency in work. We like to do what 
we can do well. In neglecting to give efficiency to the working 
girls and boys the state has committed an immeasurable sin of 
neglect. 

It is not enough to make a child a competent industrial worker. 
He must also be made a worthy member of society. He must be 
taught his rights and his obligations to himself,', his fellows, and 
the state. Courses in "Citizensllip , ' are an important part of train- 



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ing m Continental Industrial Schools. Children are taught to- 
understand and appreciate the ordered processes of the law. The 
brassmakers of Birmingham sent a delegation to examine German 
working conditions. They reported: We have frequently been 
asked 'wherein lies the cause of the better social conditions of the 
Berlin brass workers?' The answer is summed up in the words, 
'duty, responsibility, discipline, work, order, and method.' These 
qualities are much in evidence among the officials and employers 
of labor and the work people." Contrast this with the American 
situation, with the unrest, the shirking, and the hate of work of a 
great portion of American workers. The Continental Schools also 
include courses in hygiene, the structure of the body, its nourish- 
ment, care and cleanliness; in deportment at home and in society, 
towards teachers and helpers; sanitation; social legislation; trade 
and commerce and their relation to the well-being of the workers 
and to society. 

The task method is used in these schools. A course consists, 
for instance, of thirty tasks. A boy who can give all his time 
to the school goes correspondingly faster than a little bread winner 
who can give only a few hours a week. Neither child is retarded 
by the other. They work side by side at minimum expense and 
without friction. 

Trade School Contribution 

Our few great trade schools have their purpose; and fortunate is 
the community that possesses one. It is, however, astonishing 
that a people supposedly so intelligent, has trusted so completely 
to the so-called trade school, with its enormous investment, for the 
ultimate solution of this problem. Ignorance is often marvelously 
complacent. The trade school necessarily limits its instruction to 
a few trades, commonly these four: wood -working, metals, 
plumbing, and brick-laying. By what right is the money of the 
community devoted to four trades only, and to the children of 
such taxpayers as elect those trades? By what right are all other 
children deprived similar education? How can a state prosper 
with here and there a smattering of instruction in four trades and 
a mere "pick-up", cursory understanding of others? How can such 
a nation expect to persist satisfactorily in world competition 
against Germany, for instance? If four trades should be taught, 
all should be taught; if some children should be taught, all should 



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be taught. In Germany every trade is taught. In Munich, for 
instance, at very little expense and with marvelous efficiency, 
forty-seven trades are taught, including printing, lithographing, 
photography, stucco and ornamental sculpture, tinsmith, bather, 
wig-maker, baker, hotel-keeper (including hotel carving), wood- 
carver, jeweler, merchant (including buying and selling), confec- 
tioner, pastry cook, butcher, tailor, clerk and office assistant, 
druggist, glazier, coachman, saddler, trunk-maker, cooper, up- 
holsterer, potter, stove-maker, wheelright, and watch-maker. 

The American people are given to much procrastination. They 
are one of the most conservative peoples in the world. When they 
do decide to act, however, they usually act with surprising 
promptness and effectiveness. 

The whole country is now aroused to this pressing need. There 
is every reason why action should be immediate. For one, the 
children can't wait. We are concerned particularly with 
children of the ages of 14 to 16. A million children about 
15 years of age, must be cared for this next twelve months 
or they will have passed the period when we will be likely to 
reach them. Another million will have passed from 14 years to 15, 
and the time in which we may benefit them will have been reduced 
to a single year. 

Foreign Competition 

Again, we should act at once because of the stress of foreign 
competition. We are twenty-five years behind most of the nations 
that we recognize as our competitors. We must come nearer to 
the level of international competition. As every manufacturing 
establishment must have a first-class mechanical equipment and 
management, so also it must have in its workmen skill equal to 
that of competitors, domestic or foreign. The native ability, the 
intuitive insight, courage and resourcefulness of American work- 
men is quite unsurpassed. They are brothers to ' the men behind 
the guns." It is their misfortune that they have not been given 
by their country that measure of technical instruction that is their 
due. They are by no means equal in technical skill to the workers 
of continental Europe. From general neglect they have been de- 
prived of one of their birthrights, the right of every American to 
a thorough and ,'effective education up to the limit of his reason- 
able requirements. 



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America an Industrial Nation 

We have become an industrial nation. Our farmers will soon 
be busy in supplying" home requirements, while our industries must 
reach out overall the world for trade. There are only four great 
manufacturing nations in the world: England, France, Germany, 
and the United States. In volume of output the United States is 
in the lead. Outside these four nations there are one and one- 
half billion human souls who look ro these nations for their manu- 
factured supplies. The rewards offered in this world-trade are be- 
yond comprehension. They are to be measured in money, in in- 
tellectual advancement, in national spirit, in heightened civilization. 
And yet in this world-trade the United States has, until now, re- 
fused to participate. 

You will answer that we have a large foreign trade, and so we 
have, but an analysis of the figures is more than surprising. In 
1907-08 we exported $1,082,000,000 of manufactured products, 
but of this 63 per cent, or -$680,000,000, were of crude and semi- 
crude materials, including such fruit-stuffs as flour, meat, etc., 
$332,000,000; copper in bars, wire, etc., $104,000,000; iron and 
-steel in bars, billets, rails, etc., $48,000,000; petroleum and other 
mineral oils, $98,000,000; wood in its crude forms, $63,000,000; 
leather, furs, and fur-skins, ^34,000,000; etc. Such exports carry 
only from three to fifteen per cent of factory labor. German, 
French, and English exports carry forty to eighty percent. This 
left only $4u2,000,000 of more highly finished manufactures, re- 
presenting only one sixtieth of our total product of farm and fac- 
tory, and one-fortieth of our manufactured products. These fig- 
ures have changed in amounts since 1908, but the story they tell is 
the same. 

As a people we ai'e ignorant of foreign trade. America has 
been likened to a huge stevedore bearing down to the ships of the 
sea, crude and semi-crude material for the use of the capital, labor, 
and intelligence of foreign nations. Such exportation is a deple- 
tion of our natural resources, resources which are the heritage of 
the ages, and cannot be replaced. Until a few years ago we were 
always speaking of our "limitless natural resources." We now 
see that under present processes those resources will be exhausted 
within a period that to the farsighted is as a day. We have been 
proud of our agricultural exports; the scientists now tell us that 
every bushel of wheat exported carries with it 27 cents worth of 



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phosphorus; every bushel of corn 13 cents; every pound of cotton 
3 cents. These figures equal the supposed profits in tbe transaction. 
As President Wallace said at the recent Conservation Congress, 
' 'The nineteenth century farmer was no farmer at all, he was a 
miner, mining the fertility of the soil, and selling it for the bare 
•cost of the mining." We sell our cotton to Switzerland at 14 cents 
; a pound, with scarcely any labor in it. We buy it back in the form 
of fine handkerchiefs at $40 a pound, all labor. We must 
acquire the skill of the foreigner to the end that our exports 
shall carry the maximum and not the minimum of high class labor. 

Providence and Social Intelligence 

Providence has been kind to us, but Providence is likely now to 
Cleave us a little more to our own intelligence. The human or vital 
resources of the United States are estimated by Professor Fisher as 
•of the incomprehensible value of $250,000,000,000. We must 
now to the utmost degree develop these human efficiencies. In 
them is a natural resource, and the only one, that increases with 
use, and will increase forever and immeasurably. Other na- 
tions, lacking our raw materials, make the cultivation of their 
human resources the substantial basis of their prosperity and 
happiness. 

These considerations arouse in the manufacturers equally with 
all other intelligent classes, the highest sentiment, a real inspiration 
for great accomplishment in the general interest. The nation 
must rise or fall as it develops its human efficiencies, and the 
manufacturers will go up or down with the rest. 

The manufacturers are one in judgment with the leading edu- 
-cators and workers of the country in demanding that industrial 
education shall be extremely practical. They want it to bear upon 
its face the grime of the factory and the stress of the store and the 
counting room. It must be free from any slightest touch of sen- 
timentality. Work is real; Avork is hard. A love of work must 
be developed, replacing a present love of ease. Joy must come, 
whatever we are to have of it, not from ease and idleness, but from 
successful accomplishment, from work well performed. 

The New Cooperation 

A new relationship mus.t be established between the factories 
-and stores and the industrial schools now to be established. The 
■manufacturers must in a measure, accommodate their shops to the 



12 



use and purpose of the industrial schools, and the schools in turn 
must be adjusted to the requirements of the factories. Only in 
this way will there come the perfection of practical accomplish- 
ment. As is said in England, an efficient workman cannot be made 
in a school, neither can he be made without a school. In our shops 
is sufficient machinery for the education in practice of all the youth 
of the land. This will save the schools from any considerable in- 
vestment in machinery, and make the cost of such education rela- 
tively very small. On the other hand, the instruction of the 
school in the science and art of the industry will make every child 
at work, and the men too, understand the relationship of their sev- 
eral tasks to the whole of the industry, and the way of advance- 
ment from the task in hand to the highest position that their de- 
veloping faculties will entitle them to. This will greatly relieve 
present friction and misunderstanding and develop an intelligent 
sense of mutual dependence. 

Social Obligation vs. Self-interest 

The manufacturers are not selfish in desiring this new form of 
education. Indeed it is to be feared some of them will regret the 
inconvenience the inauguration of the work will bring upon them. 

A manufacturer is, in a sense, only a middleman. He takes 
such labor and material as come to hand. He combines them 
into such products as their qualities and his management permit. 
Be those products of high gradj or low, the intelligent manufac- 
turer will get his toll and his profit. He wants industrial educa- 
tion in the interest of his business, but infinitely more in the in- 
terest of all the people and the common weal. The years will 
soon make of us a new people by means of this education, and 
we will have no interest in measuring who is most benefited. 

Industrial education is of such controlling importance to the 
nation, state, and community, that it should have the financial and 
intellectual support of each in its sphere. There should be federal 
appropriations, and oversight of a general sort. 

Each state in a commanding way should, and in time must, es- 
tablish a thorough-going system of industrial education, compara- 
ble in general to the present common school system. It must 
appro priate from its treasury sufficient funds for the general di- 
rection of the system, and for local encouragement. 

This leaves the local community to furnish, as it should, the- 
greater amount of money for its own schools. 



13 



Wisconsin has recently provided for these schools for scholars 
•of all ages, with compulsory attendance for five hours each week 
without loss of wages for all apprentices and for children in employ- 
ment from 14 to 16 years of age — those upon the farms excepted. 

These and other equally important provisions in her new laws 
mark an epoch in our educational history. The child of the work- 
ing man now comes into his own educationally, for all the states 
are preparing to vie with one another in this direction. 



